Borders has been delaying payments to book publishers in signs that it may be one of the first major victims of e-books. Early reports from Publishers Marketplace on Friday said it was putting off the payments to help refinance its debt but also wasn’t certain that the plan would be effective. It might have to break its existing credit deals early into 2011 after facing a “liquidity shortfall,” it said.
[...]
E-books have been credited in part to the damage done to Borders and even more successful stores like Barnes & Noble, where digital downloads are mostly replacing paper copies rather than adding to the business. Borders has been exploring the possibility of financing from an investor to buy Barnes & Noble and get a successful business through a takeover.Any financial collapse at Borders could have a ripple effect on the e-book business. It would cost Kobo one of its most important markets for e-readers and would close one of the few major online book stores. The shift could feed Amazon, Apple and other survivors with extra customers.
In a vaguely not unrelated topic, here’s one guy’s take on how iPads, etc. are killing the old media model.
Betamax was a better format, but it suffered from the smaller cartridge syndrome. Since the tape was smaller, it was percieved as less capable.
I still have a betamax and it will do 3+ hours with an L-830 with better quality.
To be fair, VHS finally got decent when SVHS came out, but it was so expensive that it was only for videophiles. I was lucky to get one on the tail end of its demise for only $99 at Walmart.
Back to books, I think we will always have books just because print is such a useful and long-lasting medium. We just won’t print stuff that is for the most part useless after 20 years….like computer books.
As a sci-fi fan, one nice thing about ebooks has been the access to the independent authors. If not for the kindle store I would have never heard of authors like Thomas DePrima or Nathan Lowel.
I hope we see more independents able to make a living off their work without having to use a big publishing house. After all why do you need a publisher if all the author has to do is hit a button and anyone can buy it instantly?
# 21 Rick – “I think we will always have books just because print is such a useful and long-lasting medium. We just won’t print stuff that is for the most part useless after 20 years”
Actually most books published today will be useless in 15 to 20 years. Bad paper is cheaper to make. Glued bindings are cheaper then sewed. Books will stay around but they will be come luxury items. Which of course will be full circle.
Borders is going broke BECAUSE IT SUCKS.
Ever try to find a book in there? Everything is out of order. Then it’s out of stock. It’s great if you’re looking for the latest Dan Brown book right on the table inside the doors. Anything else: forget about it.
Which brings me to eBooks: All you losers who read for entertainment are the ones behind this lousy conspiracy. Not only do the e-reader devices suck — have you ever actually looked at the “book design”, the layout, font choice, etc., in these things? Awful. Anybody who has half of a developed sensibility, who doesn’t simply ignore bad font choice, bad font size, bad page proportion — will run screaming from these things. Same goes for anybody who does any real research, reading dense material like philosophy, etc. EBooks are shi’ite.
Same principle with iPods: shi’ite sound quality for apes who don’t know better.
# 14 bobbo,
Not on my way back. Just island hopping. Couple of days hiking then a couple more days diving then home.
My world IS full of banana leaves. Cook in them, serve food on them, use them as place mat, napkins. Very versatile. Wasn’t always that way. Almost no leaves at all in Afghanistan! (They have learned to clean their behinds with a handful of sand. Now you know why the left hand is considered unclean in Islam.) As for your Russian toilet sorrows, I have lived in the land of squat toilets for so long I sometimes pee like a lady. But then, in times of gastric distress, I have also soiled my shoes. Never wear canvas shoes to a squat toilet. I’ve only visited St Petersburg. Lovely city but the toilets (in the early 90s) were close to what you describe. A good place to wear Depends.
Such toilet facilities are disruptive of my favorite bad habit: reading on the pot. Paper or e, I gotta have one. The electronic variety is easier to clean. But in the instance of a squat, you need one hand to hold the book, one to hold the lantern, one to hold your trousers out of the line of fire and your fourth hand to take aim.
Borneo? Well, I spent yesterday swimming with dugongs. Seem more curious than their American cousins, the manatees. Tomorrow I go on a cross country hike looking for wild orangs and, I’m hoping to get pictures of proboscis monkeys. Probably only get a thousand mosquito bites. Borneo is actually part of three different nations (I’m in the Malaysian sector right now) and can be quite civilized. Or not. Last night I ate at a restaurant built on the dock. Dinner was a bit slow as you had to wait for the cook to catch a fish… Fresh. Glad I had my Nook to fill in the time.
I think Foggie (#23) has it right. Books will never disappear. They’ll just become luxury items again. Leather bindings, gold inlay titles, acid-free paper, sewn bindings. Hell, they may even eventually give up the presses and have them all hand copied by feeble-minded monks! eBooks, though should just get less and less expensive and more readily available.
The future of reading looks wonderful, Mr. Bemis. Sorry about your glasses.
What kill Borders for me is their decision to turn the store into a reading room. I used to love buying books at Borders but all of a sudden I had to make my way through piles of people with no intention of buying anything, sitting in the asiles and spending there day reading.
I’d often see people with piles of magazines they had taken off the rack, reading away like it was their living room.
One time I went in to buy a book on 3D animation and I couldn’t get into the asile because a girl was sprawled on the floor with dozens of art books copying the drawings.
Who needs this?
Now I sit at home, take my time looking through books online and end up buying on the Net; usually through Amazon.
As far as I’m concerned, Borders and Barnes and Noble lost my business when they decided to cater to the seagulls instead of the paying customers.
Electronic Paper
Not to mention that damn Gutenberg screwing up the market for illuminated manuscripts!
What I want to know is how the large, asset rich, public libraries are planning to stay relevant? They usually occupy large, stylish, well lit and airconditioned buildings in high land value areas of town.
Analysts have been predicting B&N and Borders filing bankruptcy for a couple months already so I think this will be the year it will happen.
It’s interesting to see how the internet and technology overall are making many businesses and jobs obsolete. With a rising population worldwide I wonder how our world can handle it.
Bobbo already mentioned one alternative use for paper books, but here are a couple of others-
Recording family history
Pressing and preservation of flowers that you’ve given to your lover
Hiding money or other valuables
Making a short step stool
Helping to create good posture in girls who practice walking while balancing them on their heads
Giving thirteen year old boys a way to ingratiate themselves with the opposite sex at the bus stop (Mary, can I carry your books?)
Proping up or balancing wobbly tables and furniture
Gaining the attention of your teenage son. Try throwing your Kindle vs an unabridged paperback edition of Plutarch’s Lives at your inattentive son and see which one is still readable later.
Quieting a noisy cat in the middle of the night (almost as good as an old shoe).
Using as fuel for fire circles to keep the gouls at bay after the coming zombie apocalypse.
Quantum–very impressive. You came real close to the singularity, but I would still add using books to build a book case: classic! Books you have read that aren’t worth reading again become the vertical building blocks. I got misty eyed when my book bookcase got donated to the local paperback store.
I owned a betamax for a long time. Even wrote Sony a letter telling him to wise up and increase the size of the cassette so he could compete with VHS. He had years to make this simple change but didn’t listen to bobbo and lost that market. I thought he might listen as I met him in Waikiki one trip. With two other non-body guard looking types at a sushi bar. He was happy I had ordered in Japanese and was telling friends about my trip to China and how downscale it was compared to Japan. At least, thats how I remember it. Ha, ha.
They say change is traumatic. Most times we all thing: not to me. but then every once in a while you notice the wounds. I don’t even look for pay phones any more. Not a deep wound, but it leaves a mark.
As I’ve posted several times: its not the loss of books that will matter as INFO is still available and its arguable that links/updates/verification/forwarding/access/variety/decentralization will make INFORMATION a value added resource for society. No. Its the destruction of magazines and newspapers that contains the injuries and that relates back to INFORMATION. The quality/type of information is changing in ways we can’t predict.
I’ll keep my fingers crossed.
I have a Kindle II. After reading tens of thousasnds of pages on it, I realized I don’t like reading on it. It now sits unused. I much prefer buying good used books for very reasonable prices, which, after adding the $3.99 shipping Amazon merchants charge, still usually is far under 9.99 for a kindle vaporware file.
I love the feel of a real book, and there is nothing that will replace it. I doubt books are going away.
Faxon: you remind me of the scene Marvin Belli played in Startrek with the same message. Searched Youtube and it doesn’t appear. Practically the same words, think he may have added “the smell” of books as well.
Not on Youtube, but on CBS:
http://cbs.com/classics/star_trek/video/?pid=gsXBhCZh6SuXUqyCdaowzKd2Htg5HVyE&play=true
Excellent full screen HD. what a god-awful show.
Does show the value of books though: when I try to fast forward/skip the show to Melvin’s scene with the books, I get a “This Video is Not Available” screen.
books are “mine”/permanent. Thats why I will never use the cloud.
but the advantage of cyberspace: for some reason Fiona Apple is singing–I like “I Want You.” soulfull.
When you can provide me with a portable flexible, fold-able single sheet that has long, long, long, battery life, color screen with touch application and web surfing and the ability to access the 400 odd books that I currently have, that won’t cost as much as a house, to purchase and feed, only then will I give up my dead tree books.
ps it cannot under any conditions or situations be associated in any way with apple or its subsidaries.
The big book stores are completely disinterested in dealing with eBooks in general.
For over a decade they’ve been thumbing their collective noses at my successful series of 19 interactive eBooks on digital photography, and now, all of the sudden, it’s boo hoo time in the get-your-mind-in gear department.
Here’s the latest: iPad-friendly, big PDF eBook about Photoshop Actions, including even 700+ ready-to-use original PS CS5 Actions. (As seen on DPReview.)
http://hdslrreview.com/HDSLRreview/Resources_2.html
Here’s that URL made tiny:
http://tinyurl.com/28jbvjl
“Are eBooks Killing Borders?”
Does anyone really care???
or Would anyone even notice???
eBooks all the way….
#7 Right, Amazon is a bigger change than ebooks.
Facing an aggressive discounter, brick and mortar shops have done… nothing.
Good job, guys!